Saturday, April 4, 2009

"Out" Marriage Among Gay Jews

The article linked below discusses the romantic partnerships of gay jews. Its specific focus is on how often they are going outside of their faith to find a mate. Again, an interesting and out of the ordinary topic . . . yet again, I want you to focus on the methodology. Did you understand how the researchers used both qualitative and quantitative research? What were the strengths and limitations of the use of mixed methods in this particular study.

7 comments:

The use of both methods, qualitative and quantitative, were important to this study in order to compare the findings of the qualitative information to the quantitative information. This article seemed to comprise much more information collected through qualitative research than quantitative and the methods used to obtain this information appeared to be representative of how this type of information is usually collected. The sample for the qualitative study was taken by use of snowball sampling in which participants were identified by other participants. As with qualitative research the samples may not be representative of the whole population but seek to obtain personal accounts of certain situations. I think that the inclusion of both methods into a study help to let the readers understand the significance of the research.

I can definitely see how this study used a mixed methods approach. Quantitative data was obtained by 2001 census data. Qualitative data was obtained by conducting interviews. A limitation that I saw with this study was regarding the sample. The study states that there are fewer Jews in Canada than most of the other religions. It made me think that possibly there are a low percentage of gay, Jewish individuals in Canada and that sheer low numbers may have caused them to “out marriage”. Another limitation that was mentioned in the study was problems with the census. The census reported on common-law and same sex relationships, but did not ask about sexual orientation. Some strengths that I saw in this study were that the interviews appeared to include specific questions formed to obtain the appropriate data. At first I considered the snowball sampling to be a limitation, but now I am not so sure. I think that the snowballing sampling was effective in reaching a population that can be difficult to find. By using snowball sampling, I think that the researchers were able to interview individuals that were willing to actively participate in the study because they were interested in the topic since it directly involved their double minority population.

The type of sampling that was utilized in the study, such as conducting interviews and using snowball sampling, demonstrates the use of qualitative research. The use of quantitative research is demonstrated by the equal division of age groups, which shows that the researchers wanted to have a more representative sample. They even distributed the respondents by religious backgrounds. The strengths of this study include the use of interviews for collecting data. This allowed for a more profound understanding of the respondents and their views about dating outside the Jewish community. The limitations of this study include the biases that exist in the sample. The gay Jewish men that were interviewed placed more importance on their Jewish identities than that of average gay Jews. Also, the men that were interviewed were from Toronto, Canada. The gay Jewish men from that area are more traditional than gay Jewish men from America and from other Canadian cities.

Like the article on pregnancy termination, this research article uses a mixed methods approach. However, I feel that the topic of being gay and being Jewish is something that can only be explored by conducting qualitative research. Of course you would need appropriate statistics to "back up" the information that was gathered in conducting the interviews. In regards to the sampling technique that was used, I feel that snowball sampling was the most appropriate technique for the topic being studied. I do not feel that the researchers would have been able to conduct such an in-depth study as they did if they had used a different sampling technique.

I really thought the utilization of the combined quantitative and qualitative methods were very useful regarding this study. The quantitative data provided scientific data regarding the outmarrying of gay Jewish men in Toronto. That information was impressive. However, the addition of the qualitative data shed some light on the issue in a more meaningful way. This data elaborated on the reasons and stories behind the quantitative data by including real personal experiences of men who were gay and Jewish. I thought it was also helpful to see what the parents were experiencing. I thought the researchers’ decision to utilize snowball sampling was smart because this was a sensitive issue and it may have been difficult to get a number of participants in any other manner.

I agree with you. I felt the use of both methods led the researcher to gain more knowledge than if using just one method alone. In addition, I feel it gave more credence to the research. Not only do you have the figures but you have actual accounts of persons who are dealing with this issue.

Although snowball sampling does not represent the whole population, I think that snowball sampling can be very beneficial. I think that snowball sampling is a good tool to use with those populations that are often times unable to be reached. Word of mouth usually goes a pretty long way.